It's funny how you get emotionally attached to beats... I guess it's almost like giving birth to a child... or raising a character inside a role playing game... I've created 12 beats (some are just loops that need to be further fleshed out, and some are more fleshed out as a part of an actual track) so far and man I can't give up any of them. heh heh. But then I can't help but think they all suck... *SIGH*

On a more technical note, I'm beginning to understand what composers mean when they say "this song was written with singer [insert singer name here] in mind." Well, lemme rephrase that... I knew what it had meant, but I didn't knw that it applied to non melodical "singers" like MCs. Apparently I was wrong. In working on one of the tracks I took the opposite route that I would normally take in working with MCs which was to have them write their lyrics without a beat. What happened then was that each MC had their own vision of what the track was going to be like and their rhyme patterns and voices were tuned to that virtual track. I was then able to understand what each MC was trying to go for and make a beat to match their individual style... Although it may seem obvious in hindsight, but it's a rather interesting phenomenon to me. As interesting as the picture of the high rising fountain I took at the point during the 3 rivers ars festival where Boney James was performing.

That brings out another question that I ask myself all the time... How much further can I go as somebody who's never really had any serious formal music training... Can I really compete in the music industry with this presumed "talent" and "ear" that I only think I have? I mean, all these things I have learned on my own through personal musical evolution may be something every single freshmen in a music college learn within the first few days in Music 101... How pathetic would that mak me? *SIGH* Man, I'm one insecure musician... What I need is to just try my talent out there in the open to see how it compares... Hmmm...

Project "Scratch Paper" is coming along rather painfully... Lots of beats made, scrapped, reworked, etc... vitrtually everyday... So far, it is just as painful as remixing, but I feel much more freedom since I have a totally blank canvas to work with as opposed to one that already has somebody else's pencil drawings on it... Then again it's a lot more frustrating, too... But, this gives such meaning to my life, it's not even funny. :)

Speaking of pain, I just got back from a play sponsorder by the 3 rivers arts festival called "Yo Mama". It's a play about everything from the pain of giving birth to the everyday life of a mom who has to take care of her kids. You can follow the link and read the synopsis and review yourself, but basically I just wanted to say that, when storytelling is done well you feel as if you truly understand what it is like to be in the story teller's shoes (of course, you'll never really know unless you experience it first hand, but that's why I emphasized "feel"). I think they did a very good job of letting the audience feel what motherhood is all about. Although I will never really feel what it is like to be a mom, I sure as hell ain't gonna mess with any mom. ;) Man, I'm in a pretty good mood... It must be the energy I got from those performers... Wish you all the best, and may you touch many more souls!

Sorry it took me a friggin life time, but the real video clip of iFS' performance @ LG 2003 is finally up in the creations section! Look at my proud b-boys doing they thang! ;)

Got back last night from a pleasant road trip to NYC and back. We were there to check out "Celebrate Brooklyn". More specifically we wanted to check out Blackalicious perform on stage. ;) The show was great and boy Gift of Gab is certainly one of the quickest rhyme spitters around...

However, watching their performance did give the same feeling that I had gotten from being at the Gangstarr concert which is that it doesn't sound very live... I think one of the reason is that there isn't anything special they did that I couldn't have gotten from listening to their CD... nothing to consider a "lil sumthin sumthin for comin' out to see us", ya know? The other thing is that when you hear a full band perform live, the acoustics and the nuances of the instruments being projects to your ears through the carefully positioned sound system gives you the genuine experience of a live performance, but when all you got is a DJ who stands in the back just playing pre-recorded tracks you don't get that feeling at all... This further strengthens my belief that in order for a DJ to take on the role of an actual live band he/she has to bring a lot more than his/her production mojo to the table. Simply mixing and throwing in scratches here and there isn't enough... Got to have something more going on... I suppose doing the entire song by juggling could be a bit annoying, but even if it has to come to that I think the DJ should go all the way...

I also had good convo with Yunshik and Jaewoo (with Jaewoo on the way to NYC, and with Yunshik on the way back to Pitt) about music in general, and about Hip Hop music in specific in terms of MCs, and DJs. It's really good to be able to have people close by whom I can talk about music in more depth than I'd normally be able to. Man, life only gets better! Gimme some time to figure all this out... Enough inspiration to last me awhile, so here I go! :D

Highly inspired by the performance of the Arrested Development at Rosebud last night... Dang... It was so good listening to their old and new tunes... Their new tracks are hot as hell, too! Same positive message coming through the humble lips of Speech and the gang... Truly inspirational and thought provoking indeed. The cool thing about living in a relatively not-so hip hop centric town is that at a show like this the artists hang around signing autographs and taking pictures with every single fan since it's of a manageable size... Isn't that great? I'm sure they were all tired as hell, but they seemed to be excited to be back on the road! May god bless you guys! I now have my very first autographed CD ever... dang... :) And the CD was the right price, too! $10!! That's Sam, Speech, Jaewoo, Yunshik, and I all sweating after about 2 hours of hard core jumping around. :) I only wish our music can bring 1/10th of the postiive vibe and hope that these guys bring to the table. It's quite unbelievable how much inspiration one can gather from other people whom you can tell that they believe in what they're doing... Mad props!

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Issac Assimov -

And sufficiently creative mind is indistinguishable from a crazy one - dJsLiM -

Time to get crazzzzzzzzzzzzzyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!! AAWWWwwwwww zeeeeyyyeeeeah!!!

This week was the official beginning of project "start-checking-stuff-off-of-my-summer-projects-list". It had a strong start with the completion of one of my goals for my geeky side, and today I started to take on Reason and, at the same time, project "Scratch Paper". Reason is pretty straightforward once you invest about an hour of figuring the basic stuff out. The complexity is certainly nowhere near other sequencers/multi-track s/w such as Cubase SX or Logic, which is a big plus. Although I still think Acid and Vegas are unbeatable when you're working on megamixes or remixes which tend to be sample-heavy, Reason definitely gives me much more control and power to create beats, and I personally think it's a lot easier to figure out than Fruity Loops when you want to go beyond the drum machine functionality of Fruity (and more fun!). I still think it lacks a bit in the synthesizer dept., cuz I swear by VSTs than ever depending on built-in synths (altho the built-in synth for Reason is actually pretty good, I just want variety) ... I guess I'll need to plunge into Cubase or Sonar for that and use rewire to communicate with Reason from within. Overall, I must say this is pretty damn fun... As long as I can concentrate on coming up with something creative rather than wondering how to work out s/w interfaces I'll be a happy camper. :)